Why is Pete Davidson an alpha male but Taylor Swift a woman of loose morals bad at relationships?
If you’re on the internet, you’ve probably come across the recent celebration of Pete Davidson's ability to date a variety of Hollywood A-listers in a short period. While I’m genuinely happy for the SNL star and hope he’s having fun, I am also filled with the uneasy feeling that had Pete been a Petra, the reactions would be diametrically opposite.
There is something quite thrilling about getting our nose stuck in the romantic endeavors of the rich and the beautiful. Unlike having personal trainers, jetting off to private islands, and turning your house into an epileptic forrest for Christmas, dating is something we can all relate to. I myself have swooned over Kravis’s engagement pictures, cried a little when Paris got married and made my ex-boyfriend watch the wedding of Harry and Megan on a date at a sushi restaurant. The hopeless romantic inside is not afraid to say that I enjoy reading about celebrities finding true love. What I do not enjoy, though, are the double standards in the way society still perceives casual dating.
They’d say I played the field before I found someone to commit to. And that would be OK for me to do.
In the past few months, we have seen the internet obsess about Pete Davidson’s dating life. The coverage has spanned from speculations about his newest conquests to flat-out celebrations of his diverse “A-list” dating portfolio. He’s been branded a “Hollywood rite of passage”. Twitter has erupted with favorable reactions to him and Kim Kardashian dating. This morning, somebody on Twitter called Davidson a legend. Everybody wants to know what the deal is. What his magic is. What makes him so alluring to the likes of Ariana Grande, Kate Beckinsale, Kaia Gerber, Phoebe Dynevor, and now, the already mentioned, Kimberley Noel Kardashian West.
Every conquest I had made would make me more of a boss to you.
Funnily enough, the most recent wave of Pete craze coincided with Taylor Swift’s release of her re-recorded album RED, and so for the past couple of days, my Twitter feed has basically consisted of adoration of All Too Well (10-minute version) and glorification of Pete dating Kim. The juxtaposition of these two trending topics made me think. If Pete were a woman, would I be reading similar reactions of positive support and genuine astonishment? If you’re not exactly sure about the connection here, let me explain.
Like many, I too fell in love with Swift’s two latest albums Folklore and Evermore. I had both albums on repeat for weeks and my interest in the artist grew with each time I listened to the perfection that is August. I watched the Netflix documentary, read about her reasons for re-recording her old albums, and went down a Swiftie YouTube rabbit hole. Apart from Swift being a brilliant musician with impeccable bridge writing abilities, what really stood out for me was the immense strength she must possess to have endured more than a decade of ruthless media scrutiny. Her body image was discussed, her business moves were called “calculating”, her feuds with fellow musicians were debated pretty much everywhere and the details of her dating life were frequently broadcasted in tabloids.
Sure, most of Swift’s songs are about her past boyfriends and she is a public figure, so it really doesn’t come as a surprise that we would talk about her love life. But in the past, people were very quick to point out another of Swift’s “failed” relationships and debated over the reasons why she was incapable of getting men to stay. At one point, she was even called “the whorish face of doomed America” by a leader of the Westboro Baptist Church. So, as I was going through Twitter and saw articles on the internet with titles like “Pete Davidson’s Relationship History: Look Back at His Star”, I couldn’t help but notice they read quite different to “Why Taylor Swift Sucks at Relationship (And What You Can Learn From Her)”.
What’s it like to brag about raking in dollars and getting bitches and models.
As excruciating as it can sometimes be, dating can be an extremely valuable experience. You get to learn about the things you want, about the things you don’t want. You figure out how to create boundaries and you learn how to let go and move on. You have to learn how to deal with rejection, but you also have to learn how to stand up for yourself. Yes, there can be painful moments (ghosting and googling your love interest to find out he’s probably a fraud), but there is also growth and there is fun. So much fun. You get to meet interesting people, you get out of your comfort zone and your bubble. You go on dates that last for 27 hours, you explore your city through somebody else’s eyes. You try out new bars and you may even try out new positions.
My question then is, why can’t society let women have fun? Why are we afraid of women casually dating? Why are we so concerned with women going through “yet another” breakup? Why are men in their twenties celebrated for playing the field and gaining experience but women are pressured to do everything in their power to make men stay and, better yet, get married? Why do pretty much all my single female friends and I still have to ask these questions in 2021?
And I’m so sick of them coming at me again cause if I was a man then I’d be the man.
The truth is, I don’t have the answer. All I can do is talk about it openly and give people some food for thought. You may have noticed a few quotes in this text. Those are actually lines from a Tylor Swift song, The Man, which is a pretty concise account of the double standards we women still face today. I strongly encourage you to give it a listen and the next time you want to tweet about Davidson being a legend, have a think. Would you tweet in the same way about Swift?
